REFLECTI•NS Barbara Crossette was the New York Times bureau chief in South Asia from 1988 to 1991.

Who Killed Zia? Barbara Crossette

Of all the violent political deaths in the had seized power in 1977 after ousting twentieth century, none with such great in- Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a terest to the United States has been more nonviolent coup. He later had Bhutto tried clouded than the mysterious air crash that and hanged for a political murder in a con- killed President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq troversial trial. He had been Bhutto’s own of Pakistan in 1988, a tragedy that also choice for army chief of staff. claimed the life of a serving American am- Zia, who began his military career in bassador and most of General Zia’s top com- the British Army in India in 1943 and manders. The list of potential malefactors moved to Pakistan after the partition of has grown as the years have passed, com- colonial India at independence in 1947, re- pounding the mysteries buried in this pecu- mained head of the Pakistani military and liar, unfinished tale. president until his death. Although he had The one unarguable fact is that no seri- toyed on and off with the idea of an elected ous, conclusive, or even comprehensive in- legislature, he kept the country under mar- quiry into the crash has been undertaken in tial law for 8 of his 11 years in power. the United States, although one of its top General Zia had ambitious hopes of diplomats, Arnold Raphel, and an American arming Pakistan with the most sophisti- general were killed—and in an American- cated American tools: advanced F-16 fighter built aircraft. Congress held a few hearings, planes, AWACS reconnaissance aircraft, and but the FBI was kept away from the case for field equipment to match or better India’s a year. No official report was made public. largely Soviet-supplied arsenal. He also pro- Indeed, a file in the National Archives con- moted the development of nuclear weapons, taining about 250 pages of documents on as had Bhutto, after India’s 1974 nuclear the event is still classified secret. test. The undisputed facts about the crash of On August 17, 1988, General Zia and the Pakistani president’s specially outfitted five of his top generals had gone to a desert Lockheed C-130 aircraft on August 17, test site to watch a demonstration of the 1988, are not many. Even some of those Abrams M-1/A-1 battle tank, which the “facts” are still in dispute and can be called United States was pressing Pakistan to buy. up to stoke suspicions of the United States General Zia’s armored battle experts were in South Asia. not enthusiastic about the tank, and the General Zia was the steadfast ally of the president was reported to be much more United States against the Soviet Union in interested in the AWACS. Nevertheless, he Afghanistan, and had willingly allowed wanted to watch the trials, and traveled to Pakistan to become the base of a holy war the test range not far from Bahawalpur, by the self-styled mujahidin against the about 330 miles south of the Pakistani capi- Moscow-backed Afghan government. Zia tal. The C-130 was left on the Bahawalpur

94 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2005 airstrip, and the official party flew to the warriors fighting the Soviet-backed govern- test site by helicopter. With the tests over ment. This was Gulbadin Hekmatyar, per- by late morning, General Zia and his en- haps the most ruthless and self-serving of tourage returned to Bahawalpur for lunch, seven mujahidin commanders. Hekmatyar, then took off for the return trip to Islam- an evil and violent conspirator and sower of abad. Within minutes, the plane had plum- discord then and now (since he has swung meted without warning into a dusty waste- his support to the Taliban cause), was re- land and all aboard were dead. ported to be fearful that he was about to lose American money and military aid. He Conspiracy Theories had certainly offended influential officials in The wreckage of the doomed C-130 was both Pakistan and the United States. still smoldering on a barren patch of Paki- Or the Iranians? Iran, a Shiite theocracy, stan when the conspiracy theories began to looked askance at the prospect of a Sunni- mushroom. Who could have plotted the led (and pro-Pakistani) version of the same spectacular crash of Pakistan’s Air Force next door. A homegrown version of this the- One, wiping out with one blow Zia, Am- ory blamed Pakistani Shias for the attack on bassador Raphel, his defense attaché, Brig. a Sunni president. Gen. Herbert M. Wassom, and most of Could it be that dissatisfied, ambitious Pakistan’s top military commanders? elements in the Pakistani military—Shia or From the beginning, reporters were Sunni—had pulled off a coup in disguise? never short of theories to work with. One top general who did not board the Surely it had to have been the Russians, doomed aircraft became military chief of stung by their humiliating failure to sub- staff after the crash wiped out the Pakistani due the odd assortment of Afghan holy war- high command. riors who had found safe haven and generous Then, of course, there was the avowedly support in Zia’s Pakistan. Although Soviet violent anti-Zia group known as al-Zulfikar, troops had begun their withdrawal from led by the late Murtaza Bhutto, the brother Afghanistan, Moscow had just halted the of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani politician process to protest Pakistan’s continued who would ultimately gain most from Zia’s arming of rebels. departure. General’s Zia’s son Ijaz ul-Haq No, it must have been the Indians, told me a year after the crash that he was Pakistan’s traditional enemies, who were “101 percent sure” that Murtaza was friends of the Afghan Communist govern- involved. ment and very anxious about the potential Benazir Bhutto, who became prime fallout of an Islamist victory in Kabul, minister in November 1988, herself ven- which General Zia was abetting. Indian in- tured that the fatal crash might well have telligence operatives had a record of under- been an “act of God.” cover meddling in virtually every country in But wait, what about the Central Intel- South Asia, most tragically in Sri Lanka, ligence Agency? Some influential Pakistanis where Indian agents initially trained and and Indians peddled that suspicion immedi- supplied Tamil separatists who have killed a ately, on the ground that Zia had become generation of Sri Lankan political leaders. an embarrassment to the United States on What about the Afghans themselves, led several fronts, not least because of his un- by the devious and ruthless Najibullah, a certain commitment toward a more demo- former head of the secret police with a fear- cratic government and his government’s loy- ful reputation for torture? alty to extremists among the Afghan rebels, Another candidate might be found who seemed to have spun out of American among the American-backed Afghan holy control.

Who Killed Zia? 95 Then, of course, maybe the aircraft just adding one more theory to the list of poten- malfunctioned. This plane had a checkered tial perpetrators. history. When General Zia’s VIP C-130 aircraft, also known as Pak One, spiraled down at Accident or Sabotage? Bahawalpur, near Multan in eastern Paki- Adding to the mystery of who or what stan, John Gunther Dean was the U.S. am- killed General Zia and fueling the “CIA did bassador in neighboring India. Dean, a dis- it” theory in South Asia was the less than tinguished diplomat who had garnered more conclusive—some would say, less than seri- ambassadorships than most envoys of his ous—investigation that took place in the generation, was also a person with strong wake of the crash. Pakistan was given the opinions drawn from years of experience lead in conducting a probe on the scene, but abroad, opinions he sharpened as he moved U.S. Defense Department and aircraft ex- from post to post. He had on numerous oc- perts were part of the investigating team. casions clashed with superiors or disagreed It was intended to be a joint investiga- with the American policies he was expected tion with a joint conclusion, yet within two to promote. He was a prickly independent months of the crash, the American govern- thinker, not a popular breed in diplomacy. ment was alone in promoting the idea, In New Delhi in August 1988, a lot without concrete material evidence, that of history came together in Dean’s mind. a mechanical malfunction had brought He had an immediate suspicion about who down the plane. Most Pakistanis didn’t see killed Zia, but his putative perpetrator was it that way. From the start, they assumed not on the list of possible conspirators then assassination. in circulation. Dean thought the plot to rid Apparently to undercut Pakistan’s con- the world of General Zia bore the hallmarks clusions on the eve of the report’s formal re- of Israel, or specifically the Israeli intelli- lease in October 1988, the mechanical mal- gence agency, Mossad. function story was leaked to the New York Dean believed in “dissent through chan- Times before rather different final results nels,” not leaks. And, knowing what a con- were presented to reporters in Islamabad. troversy such a public accusation would un- The Pakistanis declared the crash “a crimi- leash, and the effect it would have not only nal act or sabotage leading to the loss of air- in the United States and South Asia but also craft control.” in the wider Islamic world, he decided to Furthermore, although an American am- go back to Washington to explain his theory bassador and a high-ranking military officer in person to his superiors at the State De- were among the dead, the State Department partment. That act cost him his diplomatic and the Pentagon ruled that the Federal Bu- career. reau of Investigation was not to investigate. (The FBI got a chance to reopen the case a Poison Gas in the Mangoes? year later, when it was too late to examine Among the murkier circumstances sur- crucial evidence.) A few members of Con- rounding the August 1988 crash was the gress squawked at the haste with which the presence of so many important officials and American government pulled down the military officers on one aircraft. The belief curtains and drew its conclusion, one appar- persists to this day that Ambassador Raphel ently not shared by American technical ex- and General Wassom flew separately to Ba- perts. In the United States, the story was as hawalpur and were planning to return to dead as Zia within a year. Islamabad on the military attaché’s plane. For at least one American, however, the Thus, according to that story, a last-minute issue is still painfully fresh. And he is now decision by Raphel to board Zia’s plane for

96 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2005 the return flight introduced a complication architect of the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in for would-be plotters and an unnecessary Afghanistan. tragedy for the Americans. Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the deputy chief Not true, says Gen. Mahmud Ali Dur- of army staff, was scheduled to fly back in rani, the (now-retired) commander of the ar- another, smaller plane. His decision to re- mored division in charge of the tank tests. turn alone fueled suspicion immediately, but In a telephone interview in July from his in the days and weeks that followed, he home in Rawalpindi, the site of Pakistani made no attempt to take over the govern- military headquarters, General Durrani, who ment or to derail the national elections had been General’s Zia’s military secretary planned for November of that year. And from 1983 to 1986, said that the guest list when Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples for the flight on the presidential plane had Party won those elections, the army did not been fixed by August 13, and the Ameri- intervene to prevent her becoming prime cans were on it. There was an American em- minister, a rare step for a woman in an Is- bassy plane also in service on the 17th, but lamic country. it brought other diplomats and officials Zia’s plane took off from Bahawalpur at from General Dynamics, the maker of the 3:46 P.M. Barely five minutes later, accord- M-1 tank, he said. ing to witnesses on the ground, the plane The tank demonstration at a desert site began to “porpoise” or “roller coaster” in the called Tamewali was a bust; all sides agree sky before dropping into the barren desert on that. General Durrani said that the M-1 below with all its propellers still running at tank never performed well in the 90 days full speed, drilling into the earth. It burst that three of the vehicles, capable of desert into flames on contact. warfare, had been on loan for field trials in There was agreement among Pakistani Pakistan. “They performed very badly, actu- and American experts that there was no ally,” he said. “I don’t remember a day when midair explosion and no evidence of hos- all three were worthy of trials. One of the tile fire on the plane. It seemed likely that problems with the tank was that they had the pilot and copilot had simply lost con- filters that got choked with our kind of trol—and lost consciousness?—minutes, if dust. Our dust was not just sand. It was not seconds, into the flight. In those last sand and clay mixed.” doomed minutes, air traffic controllers General Zia and his group left Baha- could not raise any response from the plane. walpur early, ahead of a storm. The presi- General Durrani, who by then had returned dent’s C-130, a turboprop workhorse of a to his home base at Multan and did not see plane, had a comfortable, air-conditioned the crash, dismisses as “garbage” the report VIP capsule inside, where Zia and his Ameri- that the copilot was heard shouting to the can guests were seated. It was walled off pilot, “What are you doing?” There was from both the four-member flight crew and no flight data recorder or voice recorder on a passenger and baggage section in the rear the C-130. furnished only with benches. Pakistan’s official report on the crash The plane was packed with Pakistani of- found traces of chemicals in the wreckage of ficers—“some who should have been there the plane, a lot of which was buried in the and some who should not have been there,” sandy earth or scattered around the site by said General Durrani, who dismisses the the impact of the crash. Those chemicals, theory that the crash might have been a the Pakistanis said, were phosphorous, chlo- military plot. Among those on board was rine, potassium, antimony, and pentaaeryth- Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rehman, chairman of ritol tetranitrate. They were all viewed as the Pakistani joint chiefs of staff and an potential elements in explosives.

Who Killed Zia? 97 Of special interest to reporters as well General Durrani did not address the as conspiracy theorists at the time was the possibility of a nonexplosive but highly phosphorous found on mango seeds or skins toxic gas in the unchecked fruit or other ob- in the wreckage. There had been instant jects. No autopsies were performed on the speculation when the C-130 went down that Pakistani crew to test for gas poisoning. mangoes loaded onto the plane at the last Various reasons were given, one being that moment may have contained explosives; their bodies were too fragmented to be ex- now it was possible to speculate that the amined effectively and/or that Muslim prac- fruit was laced instead with a debilitating, tice required burial of remains within 24 possibly fatal gas. Khalid Hasan, a Pakistani hours, too soon for forensic work to be done. analyst writing in the independent Pakistani General Durrani said that the bodies of the newspaper Friday Times in 2004, said that it passengers and crew were reduced to bits of was VX gas. Ambassador Dean was also told charred flesh, and that the victims were in New Delhi that there was VX gas, which identifiable only by clothing or pieces of not many countries possessed. identification. Pakistan lacked the technical General Durrani, who was at the Tame- expertise to deal with that. wali test site when President Zia arrived in a helicopter from Bahawalpur, said in July Geopolitics Takes Over that there were two sets of mangoes on the Robert Oakley, a member of President Rea- plane when it went down. After the tank gan’s National Security Council, was sent to test, he had sent two crates of the local Pakistan immediately after the crash to take fruit on the helicopter back to Bahawalpur charge of liaising with the Pakistanis in the with General Zia, to be transferred to the wake of the tragedy, and then stayed on as C-130. That made him suspect in some ambassador, replacing Raphel. In an inter- eyes. But his mangoes had been thoroughly view in May, he said that his first task in Is- checked, one by one, by security, he says. lamabad was “to get into this question of “I believe some mangoes were also loaded at investigating this plane crash and who was Bahawalpur, which were presented by the behind it and what was behind it.” By then, local military and civilian leadership,” he Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a former finance min- said. He had no control over those, or other ister and president of the Senate, had be- baggage put on the plane. come acting president. Nonetheless, he thinks the mango the- “I talked to the president of the country ory is “faulty,” because Pakistani investiga- and the chief of the army staff and the head tors who focused on the mangoes did so of the air force and, with the support of the with explosives in mind, yet there was no State Department and Defense Department explosion in the air or on the ground. in Washington, we agreed there would be a “The aircraft did not explode,” General joint report, not separate reports, and that Durrani said, “It came down, hit the ground the report would be issued after everything at a steep angle of about 60, 70 degrees, had been completed, and there wouldn’t be whiplashed the tail part forward [over the any interim reports,” Oakley said. “This ir- front of the aircraft] then the plane burnt ritated some people who wanted to know, exactly where it was. There were no explo- ‘What’s going on?’ But the Defense Depart- sions. In fact, I went there the next morning ment and State Department were absolutely and visited that site and there was a com- firm, saying that this is the only way we plete profile of the aircraft there on the could do it.” [They said,] ‘If there are any ground—the wingspan and the engines half leaks and things it is going to upset the dug into the ground and the tail that had Pakistanis no end. It’s going to destroy the whiplashed forward.” likelihood that they are going to be honest

98 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2005 with us, and we won’t end up with a credi- relationship between the United States ble report.’” Ironically, the leaking was done and Pakistan was to put this issue to bed,” in Washington. Oakley recalled. “They had their say and Oakley said he told the Pakistanis that we had our say, and we couldn’t prove con- “with a joint report we avoid a lot of mutual clusively that there was no outside conspir- recriminations and undue suspicions.” But acy, and they couldn’t prove conclusively in a matter of weeks, Oakley added, Ameri- that there was.” cans could see a mechanical conclusion shap- Pakistanis have suggested that Wash- ing up. [From] “the U.S. team, which was ington didn’t want to blame anyone at that sent to do the investigation on the ground, point, including the Russians, because their plus all the intelligence backup that we had goodwill was essential to completing the from all possible sources, our conclusion was Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan with- there was no evidence to support the idea of out last-minute setbacks. any outside force, outside intervention, out- In Islamabad in the days and weeks after side involvement,” he said. “There was no General Zia’s death, Oakley, anxious that re- indication on the plane that anything had lations with Pakistan remain on an even come from the outside to cause the crash. keel in the critical last months of the Soviet There was also no indication of any explo- presence in the region, heard all the rumors sives or any explosion inside the plane. and suspicions. The Israelis were not among “The conclusion of our technicians and those held suspect, he said. But might Israel others who looked at it, including the have wanted to preempt a Pakistani nuclear records of all C-130s—both the Air Force bomb, which Zia had not only promoted records and the Lockheed Martin records— but had also promised to share with other [was] that this was a mechanical malfunc- Islamic nations? “The prospects for Pakistan tion,” Oakley said. “They said it was very, actually having a bomb were quite far off, very likely to be a mechanical malfunction, and removed, although there was a certain although we can’t prove it because we didn’t amount of speculation that maybe eventu- have enough pieces from the wreckage. ally something would happen,” Oakley said. Everything that had happened to the plane “At that stage, 1988, that was not an immi- was consistent with previous incidents—I nent prospect.” think there were 19 or 20 of them—where Yossef Bodansky, a strategic analyst with C-130s sort of porpoised [due to] malfunc- close ties to Israel who is known for his long tion of the rudder—the hydraulic system.” shots—and a proponent of the theory that The United States expected Pakistani the Soviet security service, the KGB, would disagreement. “We believed that the Paki- have been the most likely assassin of Zia— stanis would not endorse this view,” Oakley wrote a decade later that Pakistan was, in- said. “The Pakistanis said, ‘We can’t pin- deed, capable of assembling nuclear weapons point any specific evidence to show that by 1988. And South Asians, along with there was outside involvement, or that there everybody else, had recently seen what Israel was an explosion of some kind from outside was willing to do to stop Islamic nations the plane or inside the plane, but we believe from becoming nuclear powers. In June that in all probability some outside element 1981, the Israelis had bombed Iraq’s Osirak was involved somehow in the crash.’ We nuclear facility to prevent Baghdad from ended up with a split opinion, if you will, moving into weapons production. in public.” In Washington, geopolitics had taken Ambassador Dean’s Suspicions over. “One of the first things that had to be For almost two decades, John Gunther Dean done after Zia’s death to maintain a good remained silent about what had led him to

Who Killed Zia? 99 suspect the Israelis in the Pakistani crash, six weeks and then allowed to travel to New and about the price he feels he has paid for Delhi to pack and say his goodbyes. A suc- trying to interest Washington in his suspi- cessor had already been chosen for the Delhi cions. But over the last few years, Dean, now ambassadorship well before Dean’s ill-fated 80 years old, has been collecting his papers trip to Washington, and he knew that there and his thoughts for public consumption. were plans to replace him, perhaps several He has been interviewed extensively for an months before Zia’s death. official oral history, part of the Foreign Af- Policy issues were also a factor in the fairs Oral History Collection of the Associa- way Dean was treated, other diplomats from tion for Diplomatic Studies and Training in that era say. Among some policymakers Arlington, Virginia. A large collection of his in the Reagan administration, Dean was diplomatic documents have been donated to thought to be too close to India and its then the National Archives and deposited in the prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and too will- Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta. ing to accept and explain away India’s per- He is also seeking to reopen the ques- sistent support for the Najibullah govern- tion of his reputation within the State De- ment in Kabul. (At one point, the Indian partment, where he was, in effect, declared government gave Najibullah the run of the mentally incompetent in 1988 on his visit press center in Delhi to meet the interna- to Washington following the crash. In tional press corps. His outrageously heavy- diplomatic parlance, he lost his medical handed performance could not have helped clearance. His security clearance was also his cause very much, however.) India, echo- lifted, and he ultimately resigned from the ing Moscow, wanted at the very least a Foreign Service. He was 62. coalition in Kabul with a pro-Soviet faction The State Department produced as evi- retaining some power in the capital. This dence that he was not in a fit mental state a was not in the American plan at that point, letter from the department’s chief medical though there were proponents of a coalition officer for the South Asian region, Dr. David solution in Washington. Koch, who said that Dean appeared in late Still, this doesn’t quite explain the tim- August 1988 to be “under stress.” Further ing, or the suddenness with which Dean was neurological tests were done on Dean, with “drummed out” of the American diplomatic his cooperation, when he was in Washing- corps—or how quickly his medical clearance ton. He also had his own tests done and has was reinstated before he retired formally and marshaled medical opinion to counter the irrevocably from the diplomatic service in official diagnoses. April 1989. “If I’m wrong,” he said to me A former foreign service officer who recently, “I don’t mind people telling me worked on the case said that it was Dean’s I’m wrong. But don’t say I’m mentally state of mind and not his suspicions of Israel deranged.” that were, at least officially, always the key Dean is perhaps primarily interested in factor in the startling nonreception he re- clearing his own record, which culminated, ceived in Washington. Stephen J. Solarz, ironically, in a distinguished service award then a congressman who was a leading fig- for a career that included opening postcolo- ure on Asian affairs on Capitol Hill—and a nial West Africa to the United States and friend of both Israel and India—said he was crafting an agreement in Laos that saved given to understand that Dean had suffered that country from the kind of civil wars that a nervous breakdown. consumed Vietnam and Cambodia. Later, he In any case, Dean was ordered not to re- served as ambassador in Cambodia (where he turn to India. He was sent to his country disagreed with Henry Kissinger about rul- home in Switzerland to “rest” for more than ing out negotiations with the Communists,

100 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2005 even the Khmer Rouge) as well as in Den- 16th arondissement of Paris, he spoke of mark, Lebanon, Thailand, and finally India. years of accumulated personal annoyances But in seeking to reopen the case of with Israeli diplomats abroad, pro-Israeli what happened to General Zia, Dean also members of Congress, and the lobby group wants to remind policymakers and the pub- AIPAC—the American Israel Public Affairs lic of the unanswered questions about the Committee—who seemed to assume that deaths of Pakistan’s president and an Ameri- because he was a Jew born in Germany who can ambassador beloved by his foreign serv- fled the Nazis with his family in 1939 he ice colleagues, deaths that should not so eas- would be an automatic supporter of Israeli ily be written off. Dean is eager to encour- governments and policies. He was disturbed age a new look at the events surrounding that a small country like Israel seemed to the crash and more research into the possi- have so much power in Washington, among bility of American-Israeli collusion in effec- both Democrats and Republicans. “I was tively sinking the subsequent investigation. AIPAC’s Peck’s bad boy,” he said. Dean does not say that he believes Israel Dean is on record as having blamed the was totally to blame for the crash of the Israelis of trying to kill him in Lebanon in Pakistani C-130. Rather, he says that there 1980, when he was the American ambassa- could have also been other familiar hands dor there and had been criticized in the sharing in the plot: India (whose relations Knesset for being too pro-Palestinian. He with Israel have improved dramatically was dismayed to discover, with American since then), the Afghans, perhaps some government help, that the ammunition that Pakistanis, or the KGB. It was the sophistica- struck his convoy of three cars coming down tion of the suspected plot’s execution that from the hills near Beirut was American, intrigues him, and points him to Israeli from a batch sold to Israel. planning. If it was an assassination, it was His ambassadorship in India appears to a very neat job. have been fraught from the start. He said The only comprehensive American jour- that after arriving in New Delhi in 1986, nalistic investigation into the mystery was he was frequently lobbied by congressional written by Edward Jay Epstein and pub- delegations or the State Department to in- lished in Vanity Fair in September 1989. tercede with the Indians on Israel’s behalf. (Epstein, who now writes mostly about (For example, to have Israel’s lone, low-level Hollywood, did not respond to e-mails consulate in India, in Bombay, upgraded about whether he had continued to follow during a period when India fawned on Yas- the story.) His account does not mention sir Arafat and made life miserable for Israeli Israel, but does conclude that there was diplomats.) much more to investigate. Dean said he was also pressed to speak Dean now lives in retirement in Paris up in South Asia about Israel’s views on how and Verbier, Switzerland, with his French- dangerous General Zia was becoming to the born wife, Martine. I had encountered him region. Israel seemed intent on demonizing first when he was ambassador in Bangkok Zia. But did that mean they would be will- and later in New Delhi, where my assign- ing to eliminate him? “If you ask me,” Dean ments as a New York Times correspondent said, “do I have 100 percent proof? No. All coincided with his diplomatic postings, and I know is I had people from Congress com- I knew of his work in various other Asian ing to me and saying, John, a man of your embassies. But we had been out of touch for background, you have to go and help on the more than a decade. Israeli issue. I said, What are you talking In two days of conversations in May in about? I’m the American ambassador [in In- the Deans’ apartment in the fashionable dia]. Whatever my religious views are, are

Who Killed Zia? 101 between myself and my maker. I resent this. abandon the aircraft for one reason or the Go and talk to Arnie Raphel—and Arnie other. This is what I regret very deeply, that Raphel by the way was Jewish, and he got a proper scientific investigation was not along great with Zia. Why did these Con- done.” gress people come to me and say, John, you gotta help curb the Pakistani ambitions for The Unfinished Story a bomb? Why did they come to me to ask The unfinished story of the sudden death of the Indians to be more forthcoming with General Zia is not without relevance today, Israel?” when the United States is dependent on the Dean thus leaves the impression that support of another unpredictable Pakistani there is much personal baggage behind his general, Pervez Musharraf, in a new era of analysis of the Zia mystery. But that does involvement in Afghanistan and the search not diminish or change the widespread for Osama bin Laden. shared sense among others who were there In the 1980s, General Zia was not only at the time that the aircraft malfunction amassing, or trying to purchase, a signifi- theory was never really credible. And in cant arsenal of sophisticated American air- South Asia, where investigations too often craft and weaponry, but he was also suspect- fizzle out inconclusively, no one but the ed of working on a nuclear weapon to match Americans could have worked methodically India’s. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had dubbed it through a case like this with any hope of the “Islamic bomb,” and Zia proclaimed resolution. that he would be happy to share it with oth- General Durrani, who calls the Israeli er Muslim nations. This alarmed not only thesis “far-fetched” and to be expected to India but also Russia and Israel, among oth- have emerged in South Asia, “where we ers. Since then, Pakistan has only upped the have a habit of blaming the Jews for almost level of anxiety with a now openly acknowl- all bad things,” nevertheless agrees that it edged nuclear weapons program. Worse, the was a bewildering decision and a serious country has been found to be a purveyor of mistake in Washington not to field a full- dangerous and illegal nuclear exports. scale investigation of the 1988 crash while If getting rid of General Zia—if that material evidence still existed. “I don’t is what happened—was intended to solve know why the U.S. didn’t come into this some of the problems in dealing with Af- and do a proper investigation,” he said. An ghanistan, the record shows that that hope American investigation might well have was at best an illusion. But even if Zia died found undeniable evidence of a fatal me- in a genuine accident, both the Pakistanis chanical fault, helping to quash some, if and Indians have refilled wells of cynicism not all, of the conspiracy theories that con- about the United States from what looked tinue to flourish, among them the most per- like the American indifference to solving sistent and damaging of all to the United the riddle of his death. States: that the CIA got rid of General Zia Given prolonged American involvement and didn’t care if it had to kill an American with Pakistan, isn’t it time to look back ambassador in the process. with greater diligence and seriousness at “This is not an infallible aircraft,” Gen- this mystery? The longer the tragedy goes eral Durrani said. “I had traveled many unexamined in any rigorous, if not conclu- times on it with the president and many sive, way, the more internally contradictory times we had mechanical, electrical prob- and bizarre this story becomes.• lems. On three, four occasions, we had to

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